Tory candidate faces Islamophobia investigation days after saying disabled people should be paid less

Sally-Ann Hart, who is already being investigated for antisemitism, endorsed conspiracy theory claiming Muslim Brotherhood is trying to brainwash American students

A Conservative general election candidate is being investigated for endorsing a blog post which claimed Muslim organisations were trying to brainwash young Americans.

Sally-Ann Hart described the conspiracy theory post as an “affecting read” on Facebook in 2017, The Guardian reported.

Last week Ms Hart was widely condemned for saying that people with disabilities should be paid less because some “don’t understand money”.

In the blog post, anti-Islam activist Cheri Berens claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood and another group “targeted university students throughout America” to persuade them to attend a women’s march – which she suggested was not, in fact, the protest against Donald Trump it claimed to be. The US president was “being used as a scapegoat for the Muslim agenda”, she wrote.

Ms Berens wrote: “[Muslims] want a young male population that is weakened, or with confused female tendencies, whether real, imagined, or transgendered.

“They want to confuse the American youth so they are helpless and unable to fight. They want to oppress the women and weaken the men. And the rest of America? They are controlling you via the media.”

She linked the now-famous poster image of a woman in an American flag hijab with an alleged attempt to push the wearing of the headscarf on more US women. Her post also criticised the oppression of women in countries like Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

A Conservative Party spokesperson confirmed that Ms Hart’s Facebook post would be included in its ongoing investigation of the candidate over alleged antisemitism.

They said: “These matters are being investigated. Discrimination or abuse of any kind is wrong, and the Conservative Party takes decisive action to deal with any incidents of hatred, abuse or intimidation.

“We are committed to stamping out the scourge of antisemitism in our society and supporting our Jewish community.

“Our complaints process is rightly a confidential one but there are a wide range of sanctions to challenge and change behaviour, including conditions to undertake training, periods of suspension and expulsion, and these are applied on a case-by-case basis.”

Ms Hart is running for parliament in the marginal Hastings constituency, Amber Rudd’s old seat. Ms Rudd quit the government and the Conservative Party over the expulsion of fellow MPs who opposed a no-deal Brexit.